


justice incarnate (or a study in reds)

by torrentialTriages



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, oh no it's sad, remember that alternate timeline when kk and tz get killed and vriska tries to avenge them?, yeah this is it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:46:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torrentialTriages/pseuds/torrentialTriages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is still no trace of the taste you truly covet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	justice incarnate (or a study in reds)

**Author's Note:**

> if i got anything wrong tell me  
> now

**i.**  
You lick the computer screen. The human in the viewport tastes like apple and cranberry. He tastes delicious, wrapped in a sensory blitz of red velvet cake (a lighter taste than Aradia's, which is the same red velvet but has a bitter rusty tang to it) and surrounded by the sharper scent of crabapples, currants, grapefruit (ugh you despise grapefruit), and tomato.

You sit back, dissatisfied still. There is no trace of the taste you truly covet.

**ii.**  
You must be hallucinating. You can smell the cherry behind his iron and steel text. Normally you can't, but you swear right now that there is an underlying current of sweet fresh cherry. You practically salivate at the taste. Your jaw aches.

He's sitting on top of a ridiculously high building all the way up to a portal. The anxiety is diluted through the text, and you lick the screen to get a better view of what he's saying.

The conversation is wrapping up. An impulse leads you to type a symbol into Pesterchum.

GC: <3

You log off.

**iii.**  
You swear you know what you're doing. You tap along the hallways, and the sea of coal and iron tastes does not flicker in your nose so  
much as become an ever-present reminder that you are los-

_whump!_

Dazed, you sit up, and scalemates fall to the ground. At least you hear scalemates falling to the ground with soft thuds.

You get up and explore the room.

After you fiddle around with a phonogram, you approach a chest, ignoring the whooshing sounds in the distance. It's probably a draft. What's in here?

Holy shit. You sniff the fabric and stumble against the chest, your knees catching on the gilded rim, and you exhale reverently, straining to grasp the scent of the Neophyte Redglare costume. It smells of you. It smells of nostalgia. It smells like paprika.

You slip into it and it feels like a second skin.

**iv.**  
You know that wasn't a good idea.

Poor, poor Karkat. The smell of anguish, pain both physical and emotional, and you finally have the cherry scent you wanted, but it's clogged by the smell of your own teal and there's a bitter rusting quality to it and that's because you're both losing blood at the feet of the feathered black alien who stands above you two.

You struggle to breathe, but end up hacking and coughing up a storm of teal blood and probably other things that should not be thought of. You strain to breathe but the coughing is beyond your control. Finally it subsides, and your hand has strayed past your darkening blood to Karkat. You feel a great amount of pain for him, or maybe that's just your ribs.

You're sleepy. You're sleepy and you hurt, you ache, you want to keen in agony but if you can just

reach

him

then you can rest, even if that means dying but god, you're so tired...

You take a juddering breath. You slip away, and the last scent that fills your nose is an amalgam of putrid rotting sickly cherry and metal and your own blood equally disgusting and metallic and your hands never just touch...

There is also tangerine and blueberry, faint in the distance.

It turns out you can't smell your way through the afterlife.

**v.**  
You are thoroughly shaken. That particular timeline has struck too deep.

You grit your teeth as both of you regard the coin flipping end over end in the air without any measure of fondness. You grimly chastise yourself. _Now there,_ you tell yourself, _It doesn't matter what the coin says._

You can't let her run loose.

The coin lands with a jangle.

She turns around, a shiteating smirk gracing her features (you can just _tell_. she's doing the thing), waving a citrus-clad arm at you.

There is no room for hesitation.

One hand on top of the blade, straight out, guiding it to its target. Another grasping the hilt firmly. Inhale, then _plunge._

Dead centre.

The blue almost blossoms in high speed (but not nearly as high definition) from the entry wound, spurting thickly from around the tears in the grey skin. It stains the orange flavor with cobalt and a tang of rusting metal.

It is heavier in the air when you pull your blade out of her back with a wet _shlick!_ and she crumples to the ground like a puppet without its strings.

You turn your back. It's done. You did it and it's over. You do regret it, you do, but you don't feel anything at the moment.

Sleep well, sister. May your rest be what we all needed.


End file.
